Marie Curie examines the power of situational data

The Marie Curie team have been experimenting with how situational data can help charities with their personalisation strategy, sharing its results in a blog post for econsultancy.com.

Situational data has the ability to let organisations identify customers based on the environment in which they are interacting with their brand, looking at “when, where and how”.

Whilst obtaining personal data can be difficult, acquiring situational data – “such as device, location or weather” – is a more straightforward forward process as the data is obtained from open sources, and therefore there are less privacy issues.

In terms of customer interaction, organisations do not always have the power to be personal. That said, as customer’s situations are likely to alter throughout the day, it is important that situational targeting is flexible.

At Marie Curie, research was carried out to explore how a user’s “device” affects email donation appeals (which tend to attract spontaneously made donations of quite low value). The results helped them to identify the volume of opens and donations, according to each device type, and tailor their future interaction and content accordingly. You can learn more about the research and its results here.